Fire alarm systems passed through development phases throughout history as they were developed from conventional systems to addressable ones, then wireless fire alarm systems.
In the old days there were no fire alarm systems yet invented and the people were extinguish fire after it breaks out with water only as an extinguisher.
Firefighting agents discovery
Later, new fire extinguishing agents were discovered like FM200 and CO2 which proved more efficiency than water in some certain applications. These fire extinguishers must be used instead of water in determined applications. For instance in electric cables fire, you shouldn't use water to extinguish the fire , instead you should use non conducting agent like Carbon dioxide CO2 with certain pressure for immersing the fire area. Using these special fire agents other that water should be accompanied with fixed safety precautions to protect people from exposure to these agents that could lead to choking hazard.
Conventional fire alarm system
Regardless the fire agent that will be used in the fire fighting system, a well designed automatic fire alarm system should provide the suitable logic to sustain safety. The first fire alarm systems were invented is the conventional fire system. In this type of fire systems automatic fire detector are placed in the areas were implanted in the zones that need to be covered and protected from fire. These detectors act when their criteria happens.
For example smoke detector triggers an alarm when the smoke enters the smoke detector chamber and obstacles the light rays inside. Also the heat detector triggers a fire alarm when it senses the heat reached a threshold value. There are a lot of automatic detector types that are available in the market (smoke, heat, flame, carbon monoxide, beam detection and more).
Addressable fire alarm system
There is one major difference between the conventional and the addressable types of fire alarm systems. In the conventional fire alarm system type the area to be protected from fire are divided into zones. Each zone contains number of fire detectors. No matter that number of the fire detectors are, all detectors are to be considered as one detector to the main fire alarm control panel. The fire panel sees the whole zone as one fire detector which means that any fire alarm detector sense a fire and initiate and alarm signal the whole zone are seen in fire (no point addressing).
On the other hand, in the addressable fire alarm system type the fire alarm control panel is capable of addressing each point or fire detector in the system individually. The addressable system is considered more advanced and more developed than the conventional one and of course it is more expensive. However it gives the firefighters a good advantage that they can reach their destination precisely and definitely that will save money as long as they catch the fire in the early stages
Wireless fire alarm systems
Applying the same concept of addressable fire alarm system, but in this case it is wireless fire alarm signals. The wireless system is taking the advantage of radio frequency technology and uses the electromagnetic waves for transferring the alarm signals. All points of the system is electrically independent. However all the data lines connection to the main fire alarm control panel is wireless.
The wireless fire alarm system is very helpful if it is installed in places that are hard to lay cables and execute dinging work like museums. But their efficiency is low when they are installed in areas have lots of steel structure which makes alarm signal attenuation and damage.
